CFA Level-1 Exam Tips With Inputs from PGP2 participants

Mission 168!! There is no candidate who got more than 70% overall and still failed in CFA Hence, scoring 70 % overall should be the target. That boils down to 168 on 240. Here are a few tips that you can follow in succeeding at the Level-1 of CFA 1. About 80-85 questions out of total 240 will be numerical problems. Majority of them require just use of formulae directly. Scoring 90% accuracy in this is very much achievable and will certainly boost the success chances 2. 36 questions on Ethics can be deciders and those who dont clear essentially dont clear ethics!! Solve all questions from Schweser by taking 1 or 2 mock tests every day (only ethics part). Also when you solve the questions, please look at the solution and understand why you went wrong or even why you got right. This is very imp for ethics!! 3. FSA has total 48 questions. Numerical sae generally easy but make sure you remember the differences between US GAAP and IFRS wherever needed. Best thing is to write all differences between US GAAP and IFRS across all chapters in at one place and revise it an hour before the exam. 4. Economics should be a easy. It is important to score high in this topic as most of it is already done in PGP. 5. Make use of videos especially for derivatives and hypothesis testing in quant. 6. Alternative investments need not be given a lot of significance as only 12 questions will be asked. Just read it liked a novel but solve the problems on NOI which are sure to come in the exam. 7. Fixed Income is a scoring area as good number of numericals come from this section 8. Just before exam, read the Schweser Quicksheet. There will be many direct questions directly picked from quicksheet

Most likely numericals: 1. EPS Calculation 2. NOI and Real Estate numericals, NAV Calculations in Alt Investments 3. Dividend discount model from Equity